The author in April of 2022.

The glass conference room looked out onto the parking lot, Lake Shore Drive, and in the distance, Lake Michigan. The sun was already high, and the heat of the day had pressed in. Rachel, my supervisor, sat across the glass table. I eased into one of the conference chairs, careful not to let it roll out from under me.

Rachel had scheduled the meeting on my calendar just 15 minutes before I arrived at work. It was titled “Going Forward,” one of those vague corporate phrases that never bodes well.

She had only been with the company for eight weeks. We hadn’t yet established a strong working relationship. It wasn’t our first one-on-one, but it was the first that showed me what was coming. It marked the beginning of a tense dynamic that chipped away at me until, a year and a half later, I found myself at my desk, wondering if I had to completely break to have someone recognize the harm I was carrying.

“As a woman,” she said, “I will no longer let my voice go unheard.”

For me, it was a moment of tone deafness and a clear signal that she would make everything about her. I am a Black woman. Both my race and gender are silenced in these spaces, and her words erased that reality. My voice isn’t often welcome in rooms like this, so her opening felt less like solidarity and more like a monologue.

She then told me she was frustrated that I had kept my back to her during a recent meeting with our director. I remembered the moment: She and the director stood behind me while I read dates off the calendar on my screen to keep us on track. My desk faced the wall, so turning to her would have meant moving my entire computer setup. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t even memorable. But here we were.

When I tried to respond, she raised her hand to stop me. My throat tightened. My shoulders rose. I wasn’t angry; I was holding back tears. I shut down, running through lines in my head just to get through the rest of the meeting without breaking.

This was never about the calendar. It was about power.

It wasn’t the first time she had managed me through tone policing or passive-aggressive feedback. During the meeting, she raised her hand to interrupt me more than once, showing little interest in dialogue and focusing solely on asserting her authority, which was wrapped in the language of feminism. I stood up suddenly, my voice sharp: “I have a busy day, and you........

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